LOVE'S LABOURS WON

Unlike the vanished Hamlet, this
loss would have been a comedy:
five funny acts, to take the piss
      out of that monster, love –
an ancient vice, like poetry,
      which no one is above.

Pinched from a dog-eared chronicle
picked off the barrows at St. Paul’s,
the plot remains untraceable
      though if compelled, I’d guess
that it involved strains, dying falls
      and someone saying yes.

The scene is equally obscure:
a blank utopia no art
of reconstruction can restore;
...